The AP newswire yesterday carried an intriguing report about the US Navy using carrier-launched electronic warfare planes called ‘Prowlers’ to prowl around Iraq “trying to stop the scourge of roadside bombs by jamming ground signals from mobile phones and garage door openers.”
My question: How on earth can the people operating this electronic-jamming equipment be certain they will not also trigger life-threatening responses in pacemakers being used by Iraqi cardiac patients or in other ways cause potentially lethal harm to civilians?
The AP account quotes U.S. Navy Capt. David Woods, the commander of a Carrier Air Wing aboard the USS Nimitz (which is now in the Gulf) who is also described as “one of the Navy’s most experienced Prowler pilots” as saying that the ship’s Prowlers fly over Iraq “at between 20,000 and 30,000 feet… steering invisible waves of electromagnetic signals over areas where insurgent bombs may be waiting for U.S. convoys.”
The AP writer adds:
- According to outside experts, receivers inside the Prowler’s tail collect radio signals from the ground, which are analyzed by an on-board computer. As threats are identified, the plane’s crew floods the area with electromagnetic energy that blocks the signal.
The plane’s computer is loaded with a “threat library” of hostile signals, which are used to match those on the ground. The jammers can block transmissions across wide range of frequencies, everything from TV and radio signals to mobile phones and the Internet.
But its jamming gear has no effect on bombs that are hard-wired to their triggers, Woods said.
So I guess my picture of what they’re doing is that they are flying around at between 4 and 6 miles high over Iraq, sending down large waves (“floods”?) of electromagnetic energy that may well end up blocking or otherwise interfering with electromagnetic signals being used at ground level to perform a broad range of tasks– some of which “may” (or may not?) be connected to physical attacks to US forces.
This strikes me as being a highly non-discriminating means of conducting warfare– i.e., one that fails to undertake the discrimination between legitimate military targets and (quite illegitimate) civilian targets that is positively required of commanders and military planners under the laws of war
As it happens, this morning I was checking in the ICRC’s excellent on-line library of texts in the laws of war to remind myself what these texts actually say regarding the unacceptability (or, indeed, illegality) of the use of military technologies and methods that do not undertake the necessary discrimination between military and civilian targets.
At this URL (PDF), I found a good, basic compilation of The rules of international humanitarian law [i.e. the laws of war] and other rules relating to the conduct of hostilities. From it I extracted two key texts relating to the question of discriminate/indiscriminate attacks; and I cut and pasted those into this eaiser-to-use HTML file. (I have underlined and bolded there various clauses that are of particular relevance in recent and current Middle East conflicts. I did that markup for reasons other than the writing of this post.)
If you scan through that file you will see that Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1 (1977) of the Geneva Conventions is particularly focused on the need to take active steps to avouid indiscriminate attacks. Clause 4 of Art. 51 reads:
- 4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
Article 57 of the Protocol lays upon military commanders and military planners a positive responsibility to exercise “due diligence” to ensure that the attacks they undertake are neither “indiscriminate” in the defined sense nor “disproportionate” (regarding the foreseeable proportion of harm inflicted upon persons versus the military value– if any– of the objective.) It says, in Clauses 1 and 2:
- 1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.
2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken:
(a) those who plan or decide upon an attack shall:
- (i) do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection but are military objectives within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 52 and that it is not prohibited by the provisions of this Protocol to attack them;
(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects;
(iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
(c) effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.
Now, it is true that US government has not yet ratified Additional Protocol 1. But it has signed it. And though it has not yet ratified this precise language, it certainly has for a long time been a full party to numerous other laws-of-war agreements that– in somewhat less detail– include strict clauses about the need for both discrimination and proportionality in the planning and conduct of military operations.
That’s why that (somewhat admiringly phrased?) AP report gave me cause for concern. I really do not understand how, from a height of 4-6 miles, the operators of the Prowler’s electronic jamming equipment can undertake anything like the required degree of discrimination between military and civilian targets and take anything like the steps that would be required to avoid or minimize harm to civilians.
Can any readers who understand more about electronic warfare provide us with any more details or information that might allay (or sustain) my concern in this regard? Or, can anyone steer me to accounts that Iraqis or others may have written about any effects that these floods of electromagnetic energy have on their lives at ground level?
Helena,
pacemakers being used by Iraqi cardiac patients or in other ways cause potentially lethal harm to civilians?
Helena looks you still have faith in the Iraqi health system and the hospitals?
Iraqi hospital are not working Helena, the power cut after five years its worse that before the war (Two hour a day) also those Bader and Mahdy Militias control most hospitals and the kill any one not from them or suspicious of him more there are many incidents US forces destroy or went inside hospitals and drags those peoples who injured or sick from hospital as collective punishments when US forces have bad time in any areas.
Despite all the above most of the doctors are threatened to be killed if they stayed some did stayed and killed (some very experienced and very well none names) or most other doctors went outside Iraq.
Did you heard how the last Dr. Killed just days ago?
Dr Khalid Al-Na’ab he is very experienced doctor from Baghdad he was on trip out side Iraq to give his seminar of his finding of dieses due to viruses and the that war related and environmental effect of the war when he back in Baghdad same day killed!!!!!
So I believe US using Iraq as a lab for their lethal weapons to tested, ember Bremer said early days when he come to Baghdad “Let make them 5Millions!!)
Once again, the American military has taken to the air because it hasn’t the first clue about how to get out of its own self-inflicted problems on the Terra Incognito of an Iraq that it cannot even recognize, let alone “control.” As Frances Fitzgerald said about a similar American military drowning decades ago in Southeast Asia: “They were like an Orwellian Army. They knew everthing about strategy and tactics, but didn’t know where they were.”
The higher up in the air they go,
The more innocent bystanders they harm down below.
And can we please, once and for all, stop legitimizing this blundering, criminal negligence by dressing it up in the obscene euphemisms of “collateral damage” to “bad weddings” and “safe houses” conducted in “surgical” strikes using “precision” ordnance? Even Civil War surgery without anesthetic or disenfectants didn’t produce such “advanced” suffering as “modern” America has inflicted on yet another hapless foreign people who never attacked or threatened to attack America.
Sweeny Todd meets Thomas Hobbes in the barber/butcher shop of Bedlam in Baghdad.
EW tends to be frequency-specific, and medical devices are designed to operate on different frequencies than garage-door openers and cell phones (for obvious reasons). Moreover, pacemakers are not built to receive a signal from outside, and I doubt an EW plane or groups of EW planes could produce enough energy at ground level to produce a local electro-magnetic field powerful enough to disrupt a medical device shielded by an inch or so of flesh and bone. (Radio is pretty low-powered, as these things go.) Medical systems themselves are shielded against interference, as well. Sonar systems can kill whales under certain conditions, but those are much more powerful systems sending waves through a medium of much, much greater density.
In fact, given the ubiquity of cell-phones, I doubt there’s very much utility in attempting to jam communications sections of the spectrum, given the energy needed across such a large area. What would be more interesting would be to pick out a remote-detonator signal and trace it back to its source for a counter-strike, but I doubt that it’s feasible.
Iraq 2007: Hell on Earth where not even the hospitals are safe
Eurosabra
I doubt there’s very much utility in attempting to jam communications sections of the spectrum, given the energy needed across such a large area.
You my be right in this, but tell this our experiences, in 1981 when the Israeli fighters close to the target (Iraqi Nuclear Research Centre) all the Rader Station went blank, the TV station went off (Noting on TV) the radio cut (No receiving signal) here Talking all the Air Defence Radar stations on the skirt of Baghdad city. These 25 years ago
This bring me to story I told by some friends who went overseas to study they told that there was experiments that one radar station directed toward a Dog for TEN mints, the Dog lost his hire after 10 days and after that die!. This on early 1980s
Well, I have to admit that I’m not too concerned by that problem, because :
1) I doubt that so many Iraqi have access to pacemakers given the long sanction years before the US invasion and given the mayhem after the invasion.
2) I’m much more concerned by the indiscriminate use of force by the US, aka :
The happy triggering GIs who fires at any car getting too close when they are riding the countries in their tanks and humvees.
The increased use of aerial support during the surge and thus the bombing of civilians living in urban regions.
All the other breaches of the Geneva convention, like the imprisonment of innocent women as a way of pressure on their husbands. The sweeping of entire neighbourhoods of Bagdhad where every man in age of holding a weapon is catched and never released, nor brought to trial. Where it seems that many are imprisonned only for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Salah,
Yes, that’s one of the few situations where one would want to jam absolutely everything in UHF/VHF, a long-distance raid by a very few planes requiring several precise hits on an isolated and well-defended target. So I’m not surprised UHF/VHF went haywire. Do you know about any interference with medical systems in the greater Baghdad area? Electrical supply to medical systems in areas under strategic attack is the major problem, that’s why Israeli
“sealed cribs” in bomb shelters have independent battery power. (I think Israelis have some perspective, having lived under Iraqi SCUDS. So we have a grim and bitter “exchange”. My main interest is in lessening harm, and I have a vested interest in the smooth functioning of the Israeli-Palestinian medical links, which are (virtually) the last (sometimes)-functioning integrated system in Israel-Palestine.) The others are human and drug trafficking and automotive chop shops 🙁
I would worry about shortages of electricity to hospitals and shortages of medication and medical supplies–which are apparently dire–long before electronic warfare interference.
Helena,
Your article on the use of force and discriminating the use of force related to electronic warfare and the residual effect on civilian populations is important. However, I must comment that when we compare this jamming device’s potential effect to the actual “smart” bombs “collateral” damage currently being inflicted on the civilian populations now, and the death of innocent lives, we may be diluting the impact of our argument.
I agree the principles are the same and these principles will be more important as the defense industry rolls out the newest weapons developed from the labs of DARPA and others. One of the prior posts references the “side effect” of electronic jamming or radar/sonar being death (death of a dog used in the “experiment”). Death and killing are in fact the goal of many of the new initiatives being developed, not the just the side effect.
How much “collateral damage” will be inflicted or tolerated by the use of an electronic killing devise hovering over our cities in the future?
Eurosabra,
My main interest is in lessening harm, and I have a vested interest in the smooth functioning of the Israeli-Palestinian medical links,
I am with you in this for both side, but as things going mad in Iraq, and Gaza, to me the priority here how we can bring these mad group to hold themselves and stop killing, we need to admit this situation either in Iraq and in Gaza related to very hardship of living due to the sanction.
If you need to take the humanity from a people just make them hungry unsecured they will be a wiled and there are no limits to their madness.
This approved in Iraq, 13 years of sanction make each single Iraqi suffer and you need to understand after the invasion Iraqis waited more than one year to Paul Bremer to give the hope instead his interests was to privatising Iraq resources and economy in same time in one signature he damages 500,000 Iraqi lives striped them the only payment and financial sources of living, what we see now its the outcome of Paul Bremer mismanagements (US Plane) for Iraq.
In regards of power to hospitals I don’t know how are you familiar with Iraq health and power system before the invasion or even before 1991 war?
But I don’t recall there is power cut as such, but as pre Iraq/Iran war and this regime was before that, each Hospital had its own standby power generators this is as I remember from early 60s, but during Iraq/Iran war there was a weak up call to every one to have his plane so most if not all Hence frames, private factory, universities institutions the make their plane and supplied their standby generators (off course with government support, and importing the best brand to Iraqis).
In addition to that Iraq had very smart power destructions system in place late 70s, I recall visiting the Biggest Hydroelectric Power Dam in Mossel (North Iraq) that Dam had 400MW surpluses power generation (at that time there was negotiations to export to Turkey), all the power generators (Dam, Fuel, others) are interconnected by and advanced complicated distribution network which overcome any fault of any generator so others will take over until it fixed.
So if you talking about Iraqi electricity power this was let 70s most of its stays after 1991 despite the damaged mad by US using Steel Meshes Blankets thronged on most of power plants and HV destructions lines specially west Iraq and we lived in complete dark for FOURE Months until Iraqi engineers worked hard to restore the power again.
Helena, this is caught my eyes this bit of news so funny please read it:
Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build Gay Bomb
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”
The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
“you need to understand after the invasion Iraqis waited more than one year to Paul Bremer to give the hope instead his interests was to privatising Iraq resources and economy”
Indeed, friend Salah. You don’t need to understand much more than that.